


The Moon When I'm Lost

by nohrg



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Ficlet, M/M, do I know anything about the Crusades? not really, meet cute/murder cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:33:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25426957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nohrg/pseuds/nohrg
Summary: Nicky and Joe kill each other for the first time.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 1
Kudos: 92





	The Moon When I'm Lost

The air was still and stiff, blood and shit and the stink of thousands of unwashed men waiting for what the dawn would bring.

In the quiet of the night, Nicolo searched for relief. Tomorrow he would do his duty, bear down his blade on countless foes in this ravaged land.

Tonight, he sought comfort in the arms of another.

The name of the man didn’t matter, nor did his face. It was quick, dirty, for each other’s relief only. Without words, they knew what the other needed; a warm body on a moonless night.

As he lay under the stars and slept fitfully, Nicolo knew that it was not what he wanted.

* * *

They lay dead on the sun-beaten battlefield, surrounded by countless others. Nicolo’s blade had sheared halfway through the man’s body as the fallen foe’s spear pierced through his heart.

Nicolo blinked as he woke up, sure that he had been going to see God. The man who killed him, who he had killed with his last, shook his head as he too woke.

The knight scrambled to his feet as his foe did the same, grabbing the nearest weapons.

They struck each other dead.

* * *

Swords, crossbows, spears, fists, it did not matter. They fought and killed and never died.

“How are we not dead?” Nicolo said as he lay on the ground in defeat. He was tired. He hurt. The moon rose all the same, a small crescent in the sky. “By what grace of God is this?”

The man who lay next to him laughed, a wet and pained sound. “I do not think that this is Allah’s doing.”

Nicolo rolled onto his side to face the man, wincing as his cracked and bruised ribs bore his weight. “And what is the name of the man who I cannot kill?”

The man turned with a wry smile and kinder eyes than Nicolo deserved. “My name is Yusef.”

Nicolo couldn’t tell what compelled him to kiss the man. The eyes, the smile, the mutual frustration at being unable to die on this long-abandoned bloody battlefield.

Relief, is what he rationalized it as. It was dark, they had died again and again that day, and they wanted relief. Only that, and nothing more.

* * *

They dreamed, horrible, terrible dreams. They felt countless blows they had traded. They heard fire and thunder, and saw the faces of two women both beautiful and terrible. They gasped awake in each other’s arms, feeling an inexorable pull to the east.

Nicolo gazed at the man next to him. His enemy, his only companion in this sea of blood, Yusef.

“Your blows wound me even in dreams, Nicolo,” Yusef said with laughter on his voice.

“You saw that as well then?”

Yusef looked towards the rising sun. “Do you think they are like us? Unable to die when by all rights we should be dead?”

“Only one way to find out.” Nicolo stood and extended a hand to Yusef.

* * *

It was a long journey on foot, and Nicolo and Yusef saw many wondrous things. The wounds that healed too fast after they defended themselves, soaring mountains and hidden oases, the moonlight in each other’s eyes.

It started as relief, then warmth on a cold desert night. Soon they shared a bed roll every night, and a real bed when they could.

Just until they got the answers they were searching for, Nicolo lied to himself. Then they could part ways again, become the enemies they were supposed to be.

Those lies never passed his lips, not with Yusef claiming them at every opportunity.

* * *

They saw many battlefields together. Small skirmishes, brutal bloody wars. Their swords danced in each other’s defense, a trail of blood leading to the men who would not die.

Nicolo’s greatsword clanged against an axe. The woman he faced–

He paused. He knew her face. He stepped back next to Yusef, who knew the battle was over. They stood, the sole survivors of this conflict, the four immortal warriors who could not die.

Yusef smiled, that wry grin that drew Nicolo like a moth to flame. “We’ve dreamed of your faces,” he tells the strangers who are not so strange.

“I didn’t think there would be any more like us,” the woman with an axe said. Andromache the Scythian. She hefted it over her shoulder with a casual ease from years, decades, centuries, millennia of use.

“What are we?” Nicolo asks, almost afraid of the answer.

“Warriors,” her companion, Quynh, says, wiping her sword clean with practiced care. “Fighting for what is right.”

“And that is it? No explanation for this?” Nicolo slashed his palm open with a hiss of pain, only to watch it close before his eyes.

“Well, there’re no gods to explain it,” Andromache said. “Quynh and I have made our own meaning.”

* * *

In the quiet of the night, Nicolo stared into Yusef’s eyes as they lay next to each other under the full moon.

They had their answers. What they had been searching for this whole time. They could part ways, return to their peoples and become enemies once more. Andromache gave them the choice.

“I want to stay–“ they said at the same time.

Nicolo blinked. Yusef’s smile grew.

Nicolo couldn’t tell who kissed who first that night. And again, and again, and for over a millennia.


End file.
